Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I thank all the Deputies for their contribution. Many valid points were made and I will try to deal with as many as I can. Deputy Ring asked about the universal social charge. The charge is not payable on any social welfare payment.

We must start from the premise that €6 billion had to be taken out. Fine Gael agrees with that premise and the Labour Party does not. My belief is that if we had taken out €4.5 billion this year, the finances of the State would have become unsustainable, we would not have been able to borrow money and the consequence would have been that the cutbacks that occurred in social welfare would have been much more extreme than what we have had to do here. Therefore, my judgment, as someone who cares, is that we had to make the €6 billion adjustment.

The figure involved in this regard is €104 million, although Fine Gael claims it is €90 million and I will not argue with that - let us call it a cool €100 million. If we decide not to take the €100 million, by not reducing a wide range of payments, we must say where we will get that money - it is as simple as that. When all the figures are stacked up, they must come to €6 billion.

There was a challenge and a debate in this regard during the spring. When I said in May I had not made up my mind about anything to do with the social welfare budget, I remember much talk and, I might say, outrage that I was not willing there and then to exempt huge swathes of people from at least consideration. At that time, the debate centred on the old age pension, which involves almost 500,000 people. What I was putting around in my mind at that time, and am still putting around in my mind now, although we have made a decision - which was probably the right decision, on balance, although one could look at it in two ways, and some Deputies today have done so - was the idea that as one eliminates groups from consideration, inevitably, to reach the target figure, whatever that figure is, a deeper cut would have to be made on the balance. That is the problem.

My Department will have 39% of current spend next year, which is an increase of 1%. In practice, this means that to make savings in regard to health, education and social welfare, which Fine Gael accepts, one cannot ignore those three Departments. We have heard Deputies on all sides, obviously, make pleas for the health, education and social welfare Departments. Having had much discussion and negotiation in this regard, it was decided one could not take a pro rata cut out of social welfare, so the cut, including administrative savings and so on, was €875 million. Through various further savings, including in regard to fraud, which I will discuss shortly, we managed to reduce this to a figure for rate cuts of approximately €533 million. To take that as a percentage of current expenditure, which is approximately €55 billion, it is close to 1%.

People then suggested we should exclude various groups. I am fully aware of the work of carers, and I would like to address this issue. The Government since 2000 has multiplied by six the expenditure on carers.

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